I coach a lot of top entrepreneurs.
You’d be surprised what they’re really like.
Most people would assume high-performing, wealthy entrepreneurs are like superheroes – flying around the city, achieving the impossible and putting their pants on two legs at a time.
Not true at all.
In my experience mentoring Founders and CEOs for almost 15 years, the top performers are very different from what you’d imagine.
Here are 4 unusual traits of top business leaders:
They worry a lot.
They worry about revenue, staff, their marketing, their overall business strategy, their growth rate – you name it, they are concerned about it.
Rather than this being a negative, in my opinion, it works for them- their consistent concern for the mechanics of their business ensures they fix problems fast, and continually push for better results.
And a key point: just because they worry a lot, it does not mean they are despondent. Curiously, the elite business leaders I know appear to be concerned about their company while simultaneously being optimistic about the company’s future.
They spend a lot of time working from home.
In the old world, the CEO wanted to be physically working in the company Monday to Friday. Not so these days.
Some of the best business leaders I coach are spending around 2 days a week working from their home office.
Why? Because they need to escape the incessant noise and interruptions that engulf the typical corporate environment. And they also truly value planning and thinking time.
They have weaknesses in their knowledge.
The top business stars are definitely not holistic business geniuses. In fact, they are very open about areas in which they have little expertise or aptitude.
Unlike a lot of less successful CEOs who attempt to look like all-knowing gods, the high-level leaders I coach quickly admit a lack of knowledge – and promptly go and find other people who can fill the wisdom void.
As the great Canadian coach Dan Sullivan puts it, they don’t look for How, they look for Who.
Things go wrong a lot.
So many people think there is something wrong if something is wrong. The elite business leaders I work with are fine with lots of things not working, pretty much all the time.
Errors and falling short go hand in hand with aiming high. As Google co-founder Sergei Brin says, when they set goals at Google they are aiming for “70% stretch”. In other words, they only expect to reach their goals 70% of the time, and therefore almost one out of three goals will be missed. So they expect things to get messy often and they’re cool with that.
Looking at these 4 unusual aspects of top CEOs and founders, I hope it’s comforting that they too are human.
The more people in business who realise that even the best leaders are struggling a lot of time and that even the greats are a long way from being perfect, the better.
